Prizes (56 page)

“Would you believe me if I told you that’s the least of the earthquakes?” she replied. “But why don’t you let me tell you in person. My invitation was a very special one—I mean, in my whole life, I’ve never really cooked for anyone but me and Dad. Is it okay if I make something basic? I mean, I’m not exactly Julia Child. Will you settle for spaghetti and meatballs?”

“Fantastic. I’ll come by at seven.”

Still in a hypnotic daze, she went out to the supermarket and bought the ingredients for dinner, not forgetting Sara Lee brownies, should all else fail.

The phone was ringing insistently as she opened the door. Quickly setting down her packages, she hurried to answer it.

“Isabel—please don’t hang up. We’ve got to talk.” It was Muriel. “I’ve checked into the Hyatt Regency. Would you have dinner with me?”

“Sorry, I’ve got other plans,” Isabel said tonelessly.

“Yes, of course—Ray—”

“No, Mother, not Ray,” she replied pointedly. She resented
the inference that everyone in her life regarded her as a social misfit.

“Well, when?” Muriel asked helplessly. “I mean, now that this terrible thing is out, it has to be dealt with.”

“Look, I can’t think about it now. I’ll call you back in the morning.”

“Can’t we even set a date for breakfast? Say eight o’clock?”

“All right, fine,” Isabel replied exasperatedly. “I’m sorry, I have to go now.”

Just when Isabel had reassured herself that the worst was over and she could now unburden herself to Jerry, she realized that yet another dark cloud had fallen on her life.

She was in love with him and secure in the fact that her feelings were reciprocated. She had always assumed that their relationship would develop in time and that he would eventually ask her to marry him.

But not
now.
Not with her appalling heritage.

The doorbell rang. And suddenly, despite what was weighing heavy on her heart, she laughed with joy. He was that dear to her.

Jerry had a bottle of that sparkling red concoction known as Cold Duck, as well as a bouquet of roses, but his most precious gift was irrepressible good humor.

Impulsively she threw her arms around him.

He smiled. “Hey, I think I’ll go out and come in again for more of the same.”

“Don’t be silly,” she coaxed him. “Sit down so that I can depress the hell out of you.”

“Where’s Ray?”

She handed Jerry the note, and watched his expression as he read it. He was clearly moved.

“God, it took a lot of guts to write this. He’s a hell of a guy. You should be very proud of him.”

Somehow the approval of the man she loved, his
words of unabashed affection, had a paradoxical affect on Isabel. She began to cry.

“Isa, what’s wrong?”

“I’ve just found out he’s not my father.”

“I don’t understand.”

She gathered the courage to tell him everything. About who Edmundo really was. And who Ray really wasn’t.

“You know something,” Jerry remarked. “The fact that he doesn’t even know, makes what he did all the more—generous.”

For the moment Isabel did not have the courage to mention Edmundo’s illness; selfishly perhaps, since she did not want to run the risk of scaring Jerry away on this of all nights.

“Does it sound crazy that I’m angry with my mother for giving birth to me?” she asked.

“That’s a real tough one,” Jerry replied. “Frankly, I can’t help feeling at least a little grateful …” He held both her hands and squeezed them affectionately.

Oh, if you only knew the worst part, she thought.

By the middle of dinner, with some credit perhaps to the wine, they managed to talk of things other than parents, heredity, and fidelity.

It was growing late, nearing the time when Jerry usually made his chivalrous departure.

He stood up, moved closer and put his arms around her.

After they had kissed for a few moments, Jerry asked gently, “Isa, last time when your dad was ill, I spent the night here on the sofa.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to stay again, but this time with you.”

Their eyes met and, without any touch of hesitation or scintilla of fear, Isabel answered softly, “Please, Jerry, I’d like that very much.”

58
 

In a way, Alzheimer’s disease is like going through the torture of drowning—again and again. Just when the victim has lapsed into unconsciousness, he suddenly succeeds in finding his way above water to snatch a breath of reality. This is simply another reminder that he is
not
dying … yet.

Paradoxically for the sufferer, it is more painful at the beginning when his periods of lucidity are longer. In the end those around him become the victims. For they know that though he is not lost to the world, he is lost to
them.

But even before the light completely fades, there is an unending series of humiliations.

Adam fought like a demon when they tried to take away his driver’s license. He was determined to preserve this tenuous symbol of independence.

Since she had so much to do to protect him, Anya enlisted the help of Terry Walters, a beefy black male nurse with considerable experience in dealing with this ruthless disease.

He was so skillful and good-natured that it was not clear whether Adam knew precisely why he had been hired.

As the disease advanced, the patient became more depressed and lethargic, but Terry convinced him to jog, matching him stride for stride, alert and ready to catch him if he stumbled.

The addition of a nurse also enabled Anya to go about the difficult business of living two lives: hers and Adam’s. She visited the lab daily, collecting the data gathered from various experiments and bringing it home, explaining to the staff that the prof had picked up a nasty virus on the journey that he simply could not shake.

In lucid moments he wrote comments in the margins of the reports, and Anya made sure his modifications were adopted. If his mind was blurred—as was the case with growing frequency—she would pretend to talk to him. And when he stared glassy-eyed, unable to understand the problem, she tried to imagine what the old Adam would have done and conveyed the response to the staff.

In the brief time they had spent together, they had learned to think as one—which gave Anya the courage to enter areas where she would never have trespassed.

She had no alternative but to tell Prescott Mason. He was genuinely shaken. Perhaps behind that PR man’s facade there was a human being after all.

Moreover, he added, for what it was worth on the scale of things, he would continue to work on their behalf because he believed in what they had done.

Ever the pragmatist, Mason chose to regard his client’s tragic circumstances as just another kind of deadline. Up till now, he had been subtle and low-key, operating on the assumption that he would make his big move in three or four years. But after what he had just learned, he had to go into high gear.

In some areas Anya proved to be an undreamed-of asset. As MR-Alpha became more and more widely used and its effectiveness recognized, there were increasing requests to interview Adam. But it was clearly too dangerous to allow him to talk to the press.

Mason easily convinced the papers that mattered to interview this wife of the nineties, not walking a humble
ten paces behind, but standing together with her husband in the vanguard as they charted new territory and made medical history.

In private, Anya longed for those fleeting—ever rarer—moments when Adam would be himself. It was like a reunion with someone resurrected for a quarter of an hour. But the price was going through the agony of watching him “die” again.

Prescott Mason labored tirelessly. On more than a dozen occasions in the most important research centers in the country, Mason took previous Nobel laureates and respected nominators into his confidence and explained that Adam Coopersmith was dying.

Naturally, he argued, Adam would have been chosen in due time. But perhaps the cruelest and most arbitrary Nobel rule was that the award could only be given to a man alive at the time of the voting—though ironically, if the recipient died of joy one second after receiving the official news, his widow could collect the prize.

By the spring, Mason had made considerable headway. He had obtained almost forty “congressional suggestions” that he knew of, and nearly twenty recommendations, sent by letter and fax to Stockholm.

Except when she had to be at work, Anya never left Adam’s side. Sometimes she would drive him to the lab, and, though he was occasionally confused and disoriented, she would walk him swiftly down the corridor, encouraging him to respond to the friendly waves and greetings, “Hi, Prof.”

Previously an annoyance, the glass wall in Adam’s office now served a useful purpose. It proved to the staff that, in some sense at least, he was still
there,
“on the job.” Anya seated him behind his huge desk, always made sure he had a book in his hand.

But members of the staff, accustomed to bringing their problems directly to Adam, began to resent what they thought was Anya’s usurpation of his role. She would take their reports, assure them that the prof
would look them over that evening and return them with comments in the morning.

Why, they wondered, was he letting her take over?

Anya was aware that she was unpopular. But she counted it as a small price to pay. Because on the larger scale of things, they seemed to be getting away with it.

Whenever possible, she would go to her own work station in the lab while simultaneously keeping an eye on Adam through the glass, should someone try to reach him directly.

Yet with each passing week, they had to deprive Adam of more and more of the trappings and privileges of adulthood. In moments of distraction—for Terry, though dedicated, did not work around the clock—Adam had occasionally wandered to the garage and tried to drive off.

It was not enough that they had appropriated his license, they had no choice but to confiscate his keys. At first he was angry and resentful. Then, as his perception continued to blur, he barely noticed the infringements on his autonomy.

Finally, Anya had to resort to the ultimate pacifier. She now came into the lab at midnight and tried to do some serious work for three or four hours, while Adam sat in his office in front of an electronic baby-sitter, staring at the screen of a portable television that he had long ago bought her.

At that hour the place was all but deserted. At an appropriate moment, when the two or three remaining workers popped out for a late snack, Anya would help put on his coat and walk him quickly to the car. But she knew this charade would not last for long.

His condition worsened. In fact, one night Adam was so agitated that Anya begged Terry to work overtime and stay with him while she went to check on their various projects.

Just as she was waiting for the down elevator, she
was accosted by Carlo Pisani, Venice’s gift to the women of Boston.

“Hello,” she answered his greeting. “How’s your work coming?”

“You should know,” he said pointedly. “You’ve already critiqued it.”

“Well,” she reacted, flustered, “it sounds very exciting. I mean, naturally, Adam’s told me something about it.”

“Please, Anya,” he protested, “don’t treat me like a fool. It’s
you
who told
him.
” He paused for a moment and then asserted, “I think the two of us should talk.” His tone was knowing, but she was unable to tell how much he had discovered.

“Why, of course, Carlo,” she said uneasily. “Any time it’s convenient.”

“Now,” the Italian said insistently.

“At this hour?”

“What we have to say is long overdue. I want to know why you have kept me in the dark.”

“I don’t understand,” she responded with growing panic.

“You could have trusted me,” he persevered. “In fact, if you had, it would never have come to this. I respect you as a scientist. We could have worked together.”

She shrugged, at a loss for words.

“Anyway,” he said, “since you locked the front gate, I had to resort to the only approach that would be off limits to you.”

He then continued, with a trace of satisfaction, “Last night I waited nearly two hours in the men’s room hoping he’d come in to use it before going home. And, of course, he did.”

Still trying to maintain an outward calm, Anya casually asked, “And what did he say to you?”

“He didn’t have to talk, his actions said everything.” Pisani spoke with something approximating compassion. “I almost cried when I saw it. This brilliant, splendid
man, was so pathetically disoriented … that he pissed in the middle of the floor.”

“Oh Jesus,” Anya said, letting down her guard and covering her face with her hands.

“He’s a very sick man,” Carlo murmured in a tone that sounded strangely conspiratorial. “We have to talk now.”

Anya could merely nod. She was crying. Not for herself, but for Adam’s degradation. “Why the sudden urgency?”

He hesitated and then said softly, “Because there are other people waiting.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”